tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-139773552014-10-06T23:18:18.605-05:00fognlGet off my lawn.Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09042925463854783474noreply@blogger.comBlogger190125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13977355.post-51618117539184819292011-11-06T09:50:00.000-06:002011-11-06T09:50:03.956-06:00How to use the LookSee Encoder APIA few people have been asking about how to use the LookSee Encoder API, so I thought I would post something about it. I hadn't really planned on other people wanting to use it, but apparently I'm not the only person who wants to encode a video out of a series of JPG images.<br /><br /><b>LookSee Encoder</b><br /><a href="https://market.android.com/details?id=com.fognl.android.service.looksee.encoder" target="_blank">LookSee Encoder</a> is essentially a slimmed-down <a href="http://ffmpeg.org/" target="_blank">FFmpeg</a> implementation that runs on Android. It can encode a video from a series of images, create a series of images from a video file, and convert videos between formats. It's packaged as a standalone application that you download to your device. Once downloaded, an application communicates with it via broadcast Intents. Some example code illustrating how to use it can be downloaded <a href="http://fognl.com/files/EncodeExample.java" target="_blank">here</a>.<br /><br />Note:<br /><br /><ul><li>If you're encoding a series of images into a video, be sure and&nbsp;name the image files sequentially as 9-digit 0-padded numbers, for example <b>000000005.jpg</b>. The numbers cannot skip. FFmpeg finds the files to include the video as "%09d.jpg". It will run through the list of files in sequence until it can't find any more files. If the file names skip a number (e.g. 000000005.jpg, 000000007.jpg), FFmpeg will stop at #5.</li><li>Following the link to LookSee Encoder, you'll notice a low rating. This is the result of a total of <b>1</b>&nbsp;rating from someone named "kristhian" who tried to convert a 2-hour movie on his Android device. It took a very long time. If kristhian had tried to perform the same task on a dual-core desktop PC, it's likely it would have taken more than the hour he complained about. Honestly, I hadn't considered someone trying to convert a feature-length film with it. So, just a note. If you write an app that handles long videos, you might want to warn the user about the time required to extract all the frames from Lord Of The Rings.</li></ul><div>If you want to see LookSee Encoder in action, try <a href="https://market.android.com/details?id=com.fognl.android.apps.looksee" target="_blank">LookSee Animator</a> or <a href="https://market.android.com/details?id=com.fognl.android.apps.looksee.draw" target="_blank">LookSee Draw</a>.</div><div><br /></div>Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09042925463854783474noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13977355.post-52898461348778409052011-09-03T01:41:00.001-05:002011-09-03T01:41:35.463-05:00<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 16px;">Monday morning before last, I wrecked my car, an '01 Acura Integra. I was driving down a rural highway on my way to work like I do every morning, when an 80-year-old man crossed the road in front of me. He had no idea I was there, and I had no time to react. I hit him at about 45mph, and totaled my car.</span><br /><div><br /></div><div>The strange thing is, I was actually driving it to work just that one day that week. I had a meeting scheduled with a guy I was going to buy another car from, a Civic hatchback that I would use as a commuter car so I could keep the Integra in the garage and "save" it. I figured if it spent the majority of its time in the garage, it wouldn't get worn out, stolen, scratched, etc. I guess I took care of that problem...</div><div><br /></div><div>I got several injuries out of the wreck. I broke my heel (surgery is coming up next week), bit through my tongue, cracked a rib, got stabbed in the knee by my ignition key, and got a mild concussion. But for some reason, I keep thinking of the loss of my car as the worst part of the whole thing. Maybe that will change after I've spent 3 months on crutches struggling to do simple things like carrying a cup of coffee while I walk. Who knows?&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>Anyway, I had the car for 6 years, and drove it almost exactly 100,000 miles during that time. It had 45,684 miles on it when I got it, and it had 146,548 miles on it when it died. During that time, I took it on a few trips, drove it back and forth to work, washed it, serviced it, and had a lot of fun driving it. It was quick for a FWD 4cyl. car, sounded good, and never left me stranded. I got to where I enjoyed the Saturday or summer-evening ritual of pushing it out of the garage, opening the hood, looking around at things, and making sure everything was working properly.</div><div><br /></div><div>It was just a piece of machinery, but I'm going to miss it.</div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-j2Ma8eFmYn0/TmHMDLLkIGI/AAAAAAAAAxs/Tu88vRKhOKM/s1600/rip-sweet-car.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="142" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-j2Ma8eFmYn0/TmHMDLLkIGI/AAAAAAAAAxs/Tu88vRKhOKM/s320/rip-sweet-car.png" width="320" /></a></div><div><br /></div>Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09042925463854783474noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13977355.post-20068664786745192912011-07-30T10:25:00.004-05:002011-07-30T10:40:37.120-05:00Quick and dirty distributed Git repositoryA friend told me about a cool trick for using DropBox as a distributed Git repository, and I adapted the approach for use with Ubuntu One. <div><br /></div><div>In your ~/Ubuntu One directory, do this:</div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" >mkdir -p repo/myproject</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" >cd repo/myproject</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" >git init --bare</span></div><div><br /></div><div>Then in your project directory, do this:</div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" >git remote add uone $HOME/Ubuntu\ One/repo/myproject</span></div><div><br /></div><div>Now, when you want to push changes to your Ubuntu One directory, just do this:</div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" >git push uone master</span></div><div><br /></div><div>...and it will be shared according to Ubuntu One's upload settings.</div><div><br /></div><div>You can share your repo directory with others, and they can get your changes by doing this in a project directory (once their sync directory is populated with the shared folder's contents):</div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" >git clone $HOME/Ubuntu\ One/repo/myproject</span></div><div><br /></div><div>...and that appears to be it.</div><div><br /></div><div>Obviously, it's not what you'd typically do for a big project, but for small things you want to share with specific people, it works pretty well (not to mention providing a handy backup).</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09042925463854783474noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13977355.post-82009646319311721042011-02-10T09:31:00.001-06:002011-02-10T09:31:48.189-06:00Blogger for Android<div><p>Cool... a blogging app for Android just appeared. Test 123...</p></div>Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09042925463854783474noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13977355.post-72595263994557719142010-10-20T23:33:00.002-05:002010-10-20T23:35:50.632-05:00Greed 2: Dark ThemeI just posted a Greed update that adds a "Dark Theme" option in the preferences. When selected, the article list and article viewer switch to a dark theme, better for reading at night.<br /><br />Note that the article viewer does this by manipulating the styles in the HTML it's displaying in articles. This means that it works for the most part, but there will inevitably be some pages that display in their original colors, since the HTML contains style rules.Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09042925463854783474noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13977355.post-61307710233889346202010-10-16T00:48:00.002-05:002010-10-16T00:53:42.409-05:00Greed 2: Initial Signup screenA co-worker downloaded Greed today while I was sitting right beside him in an iPhone programming class and tried to log into it. He got his credentials wrong, and Greed locked up. So I decided to fix it. It turns out I had done something kind of stupid at the point where an authentication attempt had failed. Having removed the offending code, it appears to work better.<div><br /></div>Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09042925463854783474noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13977355.post-40884869306830932742010-10-13T23:20:00.003-05:002010-10-13T23:22:06.850-05:00Greed 2: OopsI just realized (thanks to Fnord) that I had been running an updated version of Greed on my phone, but hadn't pushed it to the Market yet. Oops! <div><br /></div><div>This version removes an unneeded permission for the phone (making calls, which actually never get made), and an issue with the feed list going black and not loading. I've been running it for months, and didn't realize I hadn't updated it so everyone else could use it. </div>Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09042925463854783474noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13977355.post-86721784585631494692010-08-05T23:12:00.002-05:002010-08-05T23:14:31.830-05:00Greed 2: Manual PollingI just pushed an update to the Market for Greed 2 that adds a manual polling option. This effectively stops the Feed Notification service from running unless you press the (new) "Manual Refresh" menu item in the main screen.<div><br /></div><div>Also, I added a configurable widget update interval so you can control how often the widget updates.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09042925463854783474noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13977355.post-35772109051323388502010-06-29T23:02:00.002-05:002010-06-29T23:05:34.773-05:00Greed 2: More widgetsWhile I'm on a kick to write widgets, both at home and at work, I thought I would put a couple more of them in Greed. <div><br /></div><div>Both of the new widgets fall into the "large" category. One of them shows the latest article title and a short summary of the article. The other one shows a list of the article titles in the feed/label/state you've selected for the feed.</div><div><br /></div><div>I also changed the background for the widgets to something simpler and cleaner. There's no "Greed" icon in the top left of the widgets anymore, but I kind of like the fact that they're cleaner looking and sort of transparent.</div><div><br /></div>Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09042925463854783474noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13977355.post-91993222216974676242010-06-20T22:20:00.003-05:002010-06-20T22:21:19.721-05:00Greed 2: WidgetGreed 2 now has a widget. I added it this weekend. There will be an update later this week which adds some configurability to it for things like update interval, etc. In the meantime, happy Father's Day.Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09042925463854783474noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13977355.post-18603563551918703062010-06-16T22:20:00.002-05:002010-06-16T22:26:14.986-05:00Greed 2: Feeds fixJust put up a quick update to Greed, which includes 2 things.<div><br /></div><div>First, the feed lists, labels, unread counts, and other ephemera associated with reading Google Reader feeds are stored as XML files now, instead of the binary format I was using before. This was the apparent cause of the slow/interminable load times for the feed list. It should work faster now.</div><div><br /></div><div>Another item that made it into this update is the "mobile article" option, which uses the Google page compressor URL to allow the download of slimmed-down articles.</div><div><br /></div><div>That's it for this update, but I'm working on integrating the Widget for an update appearing soon.</div><div><br /></div>Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09042925463854783474noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13977355.post-41896830176113313022010-06-05T02:02:00.005-05:002010-06-06T01:22:53.059-05:00Greed 2: InstapaperThe latest version of Greed adds a few features:<div><br /></div><div><b>Where Was I? </b></div><div>A few people asked for the Where was I feature introduced in the last update to be automatic: Instead of starting at the main menu, just return to the last-read article. I can see how some people would want to do this, but I also realize others (me, for example) wouldn't necessarily want to all the time. So there is a new option to return to Where was I automatically, under the Article Reading section. So you can have it either way.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Instapaper</b></div><div>I also added Instapaper integration. If you haven't heard of it, <a href="http://instapaper.com/">Instapaper</a> is a handy place to store links for later reading. I implemented this via the Share menu, so it's available to all applications on your phone. So, for example, you can select "Share Page" in the Browser, and the Instapaper option will be available there as well. Essentially anything that lets you share a URL via the Android "SEND" intent should be able to make use of this.</div><div><br /></div><div>Note that Instapaper integration in Greed is <u>send-only</u>: Greed does not provide an interface for reading Instapaper articles. Of course, you could subscribe to your Instapaper RSS feed and read the articles that way, but that would be a bit redundant I would think.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Subscribe to RSS:</b></div><div>Another action available from external applications is "Subscribe to RSS". For example, in the Browser, select "Share Page" from the menu, and select the "Subscribe to RSS" item. Greed passes the site's URL to Google Reader, and it returns the stream ID of the new feed. </div><div><br /></div><div>Unfortunate side effect: The "Subscribe to RSS" item appears on the chooser when "Share" is selected from within an RSS article, which is redundant.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09042925463854783474noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13977355.post-69729533709980955392010-05-28T23:55:00.003-05:002010-05-31T00:18:15.204-05:00Greed 2: Where was I<div><br /></div><div>I just pushed a Greed update that includes something I had been thinking about, and then got a request for from a user. Basically, the ability to return to the article you were reading before you got interrupted and had to do something else on your phone. Not a big thing, but I think it's kind of handy. </div><div><br /></div><div>There's a "Where was I?" item on the main menu. If you click on it immediately after starting this update of Greed, you'll be greeted by a message saying it can't remember where you were. You have to read an article before you can return to it.</div><div><br /></div><div>Once you've read an article (any article, in a feed, label, attached to a "friend", etc.), its location will be saved, and you can return to it from the main menu by clicking "Where was I?". That's basically all there is to it.</div><div><br /></div><div>Also in this update is the addition of a couple of things from Greed 1, namely the ability to rename feeds, delete feeds, and manage labels. Long-press on a feed in the Feed List to see the options. These are only enabled if there's a network connection.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09042925463854783474noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13977355.post-30674996636851381282010-05-19T16:14:00.002-05:002010-05-19T16:33:54.072-05:00Greed 2: Authentication errorsI've noticed a number of remarks in the Market about authentication errors with Greed in the past few days.<br /><br />I've also been contacted a few times about it. One person mentioned having some authentication issues trying to get into Google Reader on her laptop.<br /><br />I'd be interested to know if anyone is having trouble of this kind with Greed, and if so, what are the exact symptoms? I've been unable to reproduce the problem here.<br /><br />Thanks!Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09042925463854783474noreply@blogger.com22tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13977355.post-5598878227042447602010-05-08T23:34:00.004-05:002010-05-09T00:12:41.117-05:00Greed 2: More updates, and another appI just pushed another update of Greed to the Market.<br /><br />There are several updates here, a few of them that could be called "features."<br /><br /><div><b>UI C</b><b>lutter</b></div><div><br />A few people mentioned the UI looking cluttered recently. I have thought the same thing for a while, but there's only so much time in the day, so I hadn't gotten around to fixing it.<br /><br />Toward the goal of reducing the clutter, I removed the little lightbulb and floppy-disk icons from the feed list, and replaced them with tiny color-coded dots. When you click on the checkbox on a feed item, a menu of colored buttons pops up at the bottom. It looks like this:</div><div><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_nYlZRe4bfLk/S-Y9DzKP0oI/AAAAAAAAAMA/Gy6-HDeagNg/s1600/buttons1.png"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 41px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_nYlZRe4bfLk/S-Y9DzKP0oI/AAAAAAAAAMA/Gy6-HDeagNg/s200/buttons1.png" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5469125932970136194" /></a><br /><br />The one with the light bulb is what you click when you want to mark a feed for notification. The one with the floppy is what you click when you want to include a feed in the list of feeds to download when you select "Cache All" from the main menu.<br /><br />The dark green "download" button downloads the contents of the feed(s) you've picked, including articles, attachments, and images (when possible). The red one clears downloads for the selected feeds, and the blue one marks the feeds as read.</div><div><div><br /></div><div>So, the dots... You'll see a purple dot on feeds that are marked for notification, a green one for feeds that are marked for caching, and a blue one for feeds which have downloaded articles in them. Something like this:</div><div><br /></div><div><img src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_nYlZRe4bfLk/S-ZD9g5WUqI/AAAAAAAAAMI/VDtqsTTXDwc/s200/dots.png" style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 49px; height: 89px;" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5469133521569600162" /></div><div><br /></div><div>The article list uses a similar approach for the read/unread, starred, liked, and shared attributes of articles. There are "download" and "clear" items for articles, and a "share" button. </div></div><div><br /></div><div>Overall, I think it's less cluttered, although I'm still looking at ways to make it better looking. I'm not a graphic artist, so drawing those buttons (yes, I drew them, don't blame anyone else) takes some time.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Prefer Network Setting</b></div><div><br /></div><div>A previous version of Greed added offline content. When downloading articles, that version would download them straight to the SD card and then read them from there, showing the contents in the UI. It makes the UI faster, and enables Greed to display previously-loaded articles when there's no network connection. The downside is that it also doesn't update from the web automatically, so you have to manually hit "refresh" to see updates. I added a new "Prefer Network" setting (on by default) that reads articles from the web when there's a network connection. They're still saved to the SD card as well. The idea is that it will still be able to function without a network connection, but the articles will be up to date when possible.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Ads</b></div><div><br /></div><div>Greed Lite has ads in it, like a lot of free apps do. The Greed Full key app can be downloaded and installed to prevent the ads from showing. Originally, I had Greed set up to check for the presence of the key application on startup, and prevent ads from displaying. As it happens, some people were downloading the key application and Greed wouldn't notice it was there until it was completely stopped and restarted. I fixed this. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>Images in downloaded articles</b></div><div><br /></div><div>I have a <i>start</i> on image downloads for articles. When you download an article to the SD card, Greed will retrieve all the images it can and store them along with the article so you can see them when you read it. I intend to flesh this feature out soon, adding download of stylesheets and other linked items so the articles look better when you view them locally. </div><div><br /></div><div>Other than the above and a few minor performance improvements and bug fixes, that's about it for this update. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>The Other App</b></div><div><br /></div><div>In case anyone's interested, the thing that's been keeping me busy during the day is another Android application I've been working on for a few months. It's out on the market as of Monday 5/3. It's called Garmin Voice Studio, and it has a better-looking UI than Greed does. (That's what I get when I have a crack team of graphics experts working with me. Those people are <i>good.</i>) </div><div><br /></div><div>Garmin Voice Studio lets you create your own navigation voice for any Garmin GPS device that supports VPM-type voices (any GarminFone as well as nuvis). If you're on O2 in Germany, the voices will work on the A50.</div><div>Later this month, there will be an announcement for T-Mobile in the US for the same phone. More are coming. </div><div><br /></div><div>It's similar in concept to the "Own Voice" application that Nokia released this week for Ovi Maps. But what I learned this week is that Own Voice actually ships your voice files off to a server for them to be turned into a voice pack, and you also have to give Nokia permission to use your voice however they see fit. I thought both of those things were kind of strange... Voice Studio keeps the whole thing on your phone and does the Ogg encoding and voice generation on board. It also lets you decide who gets to use your voice. I'm a little partial to it obviously, but I think it's a cool app. I had a great time writing it, and learned a lot.</div><div><br /></div><div>Anyway, you should be able to run Voice Studio on any Android phone running Android 1.6 or above. Feel free to check it out, and leave some feedback about it in the comments.</div><div><br /></div>Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09042925463854783474noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13977355.post-62233560327787856502010-05-02T09:36:00.002-05:002010-05-02T09:38:32.856-05:00Greed 2: Key applicationI just uploaded the key application for Greed, which unlocks features in it and makes it the "full" application.<br /><br />I did this earlier than I planned to, because people were asking for access to it. <br /><br />Please note that the widget in Greed has not been updated to the new code base yet. That will happen as soon as possible, ideally within the next couple of weeks.Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09042925463854783474noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13977355.post-33081500427231658192010-04-26T22:40:00.002-05:002010-04-26T22:59:14.432-05:00Greed 2: ClientLoginJust pushed a Greed update. The main point of this update is the conversion of the authentication to Google's ClientLogin API. The old SID-based authentication is going away soon.<br /><br />Also, I read a couple of comments on the Market today, one of which was about the "useless clutter" on the UI. For people who feel offended by the clutter, there's a new option under the "User Interface" section of the preferences, aptly named "Hide Clutter." Check it, and the items in the feed, folder and article lists contain nothing but the title and unread counts. Can't get less cluttered than that...Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09042925463854783474noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13977355.post-85330954735456534632010-04-23T22:39:00.001-05:002010-04-23T22:40:37.830-05:00Greed 2: Offline access<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 13px; "><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; ">Just pushed an update to Greed that contains what a few have been waiting for, offline access. </div><br /><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><b>Articles</b><br />Basically, it allows you to read articles (including RSS articles and the articles they link to) offline. All articles are cached to your SD card when you read them. The old version of Greed did the same thing, and would try to "magically" update articles automatically, by reading a list of articles cached on disk and then turning around and reading from the web and updating the disk. It was trying to strike a balance between "fast" and "up to date", but mostly struck a balance between "annoyance" and "irritation." So this new version doesn't do that. If you want to get a fresh list of articles in a given feed, select "Refresh", and the articles for that feed will be downloaded again. Simple.<br /><br /><b>How to download</b>:<br /><br /><b>To download a single article</b>'s contents, go to the article and click the "Download" item in the options menu. This will download the page the article is linked to, and any attachments on the article that can be downloaded will be downloaded. For now, images aren't downloaded along with the article, but that's coming.<br /><br /><b>To download multiple articles</b>, go to the article list and click the little check mark next to each article you want to download. When you've got them all, click the "download" icon in the panel at the bottom. The download starts immediately. If you're so inclined, you can watch the download progress in the Downloads screen (accessible from the Downloads item on the main menu).<br /><br /><b>To download whole feeds</b>, go to the "Feeds" list and click the little checkbox to the left of each feed you want to download. As you do this, a little panel will appear at the bottom of the list. Click the "cache" icon [image]. Linked pages and attachments for each article in the feed will be downloaded.<br /><br /><b>To download everything:</b> You have a few choices here. You can go into the preferences and set it to download all feeds and all content, and let it rip. However, if you have a lot of feeds with attachments, you could end up filling up your SD card, and it will take a long time. I'd suggest plugging it into a charger, and doing this overnight. You can also set Greed to download only what you've selected. In this case, the "download everything" action will only download the contents of feeds that have the little "disk" icon turned on. To use this feature, go into the Feeds list and click the checkmark next to each item you want to select for caching, then click the little "disk" icon so it's on (white, not gray). Then go to the main menu and select "Cache All." d<br /></div><br /><b>How to see downloads:</b><br /><br /><b>To look at a downloaded page</b> for an article, go to the article you're interested in, and click "Saved Article."<br /><br /><b>To look at an attachment:</b> This depends on the type of attachment. If it's a podcast, you can access it from the Music player application. It should show up in your list of songs. You can also access attachments by clicking the paper-clip icon in an article. However, from here, the music player will stop when you press "back" to go somewhere else. (I'm working on this.)<br /><br /><b>How to remove downloads:</b><br /><br />You can do this from pretty much the same places as you download things from.<br /><br />In the Feeds list, click the check box on a given feed or set of feeds, and hit the [icon] button. All downloads for the selected feeds (including articles and attachments) will be cleared out. You can do the same thing for articles in the Article list.<br /><br />Within a single article, you can clear the downloads for the article from items on the options menu. For attachments, you can long-press an attachment in the list and select "Clear Download" to get rid of it.</div><br /><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; "><b>In other news:</b></div><b><br /></b><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; ">Ads. I'm giving them a try. The Full version of Greed won't have them.</div><br /><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; ">Icons on the main menu: Something to look at, I suppose...</div><br />A few other near-trivial items.<br /><br /><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; ">Next up: I need to fix the authentication Greed uses when getting to Google Reader. I'm going to do that next. Then, I'm going to work on some of the graphics. I'm not an artist, so the graphics in some places look pretty bad. Also, a widget will happen in there somewhere.</div><div><br /></div></span>Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09042925463854783474noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13977355.post-79198829431531249032010-04-07T21:52:00.005-05:002010-04-07T22:00:10.993-05:00Greed 2: Friends<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_nYlZRe4bfLk/S71FjpwrMCI/AAAAAAAAAL4/xbQP_mzmNK0/s1600/friend_details.png"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 133px; height: 200px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_nYlZRe4bfLk/S71FjpwrMCI/AAAAAAAAAL4/xbQP_mzmNK0/s200/friend_details.png" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5457594802250657826" /></a><div><br /></div><div><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_nYlZRe4bfLk/S71FjpwrMCI/AAAAAAAAAL4/xbQP_mzmNK0/s1600/friend_details.png"></a>I just pushed an update to Greed that replaces the "Friends' Shared Items" view with a "Friends" item that displays a list of Google Reader users you're associated with either by following them or being followed by them. Each Friend is treated as a feed, with its own unread count, etc. You can see the details or a friend (and optionally un-follow them) by long-pressing and selecting "Details" on an item in the list. From there, you can see a rudimentary set of their information (e-mail addresses, listed websites, location). </div><div><br /></div><div>That's pretty much it for this update.<br /><br /></div>Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09042925463854783474noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13977355.post-88376586692233345832010-04-03T23:29:00.002-05:002010-04-04T00:01:53.832-05:00Greed 2: Happy EasterIt's a long weekend, today's my birthday, and tomorrow's Easter.<div><br /></div><div>To commemorate all of this, I did the obvious thing and pushed another Greed update. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>Folders:</b> This screen is now tabbed. There's a tab for the existing "Folders" list, plus another one with the folders in a "flat" list. The tabs are kind of cool looking too.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Notifications: </b>I did some testing and verified that the service definitely runs reliably. I changed the way it tracks updates to unread items. It now accumulates updated feeds until you open the notification. So, for example, if you have notifications set to cycle every hour and you get 3 notifications, you'll get all of them when you read the updated feeds. Before, you'd get the ones from the last cycle.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Article List:</b> I took a cue from Gmail and added a little panel to the article list that pops up whenever you select the check mark on the left of one or more articles in the article list. The panel contains read/starred/shared/liked checkboxes, plus a "share" button. When you click one of the items on the panel, whatever you click is applied to the selected articles, and the panel disappears. I kind of like it for doing a specific thing to multiple items.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09042925463854783474noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13977355.post-35790578919173473642010-04-02T21:46:00.001-05:002010-04-02T21:46:32.139-05:00another test postjust testing notifications.Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09042925463854783474noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13977355.post-74762081939258333102010-04-02T18:26:00.000-05:002010-04-02T18:27:10.269-05:00test posttest postKellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09042925463854783474noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13977355.post-55342192913657351132010-04-01T12:56:00.003-05:002010-04-01T13:09:12.813-05:00So, I'm reading news articles...April Fool's Day is a pretty annoying day. I'm reading through some news articles while I work, and I seriously can't tell (at a glance) which ones are true, and which ones aren't.<br /><br />For example:<br /><br /><ul><li>The iPad has been reviewed in a few places, and reports are that the battery life is really good and it will actually change computing forever.</li><li>Truckers are going to be banned from texting while driving.</li><li>Obama wants to drill for oil off of America's shores.</li><li>There's a company giving away body piercings with the purchase of a server.</li><li>Microsoft is accusing Google Chrome of being insecure because it combines the URL bar and search fields into one.</li><li>Lawmakers are asking for an FTC investigation of Google Buzz because the rollout of same exposed users' private information to outsiders.</li><li>Will Smith is reportedly "in" for Independence Day 2 and 3.</li></ul><br />Each of these has at least one aspect of "huh?" to it. As in "Huh? Obama wants to drill for oil? <span style="font-style: italic;">Obama?</span>", or "Huh? Microsoft seriously thinks the combining of two fields into one is cause for security concerns in a competitor's product? <span style="font-style: italic;">Microsoft?</span>"<br /><br />It's annoying either way. Either everybody (specifically, Slashdot) is running the whole "April Fool's Day Joke" thing into the ground by publishing nothing but jokes, or humanity is so short of things to do that the above counts as actual news.Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09042925463854783474noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13977355.post-7104348363945760212010-03-31T22:21:00.003-05:002010-03-31T22:26:41.552-05:00Greed 2: Quick fixA few people have been getting the dreaded "invalid token" error over the past day or so, so I pushed an update just now. <div><br /></div><div>I added the "Clear Tokens" item in the main menu specifically for this problem. Trouble is, even though it cleared the tokens, it didn't actually log out of of Google Reader, so the only way to refresh the login was to exit the app. Oops! That's fixed now. </div><div><br /></div><div>Also, unread counts are updated more aggressively, so they're more accurate as you read articles. </div><div><br /></div><div>I also made a change to the background so "edit tag" tokens are re-used as long as possible, eliminating 50% of the web traffic related to read/write operations. So it's faster, basically.</div><div><br /></div><div>Notifications should also be working now, informing you of new feeds on the interval you specify in the preferences.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09042925463854783474noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13977355.post-26952205521400081502010-03-27T23:15:00.003-05:002010-03-27T23:29:03.487-05:00Greed 2: Weekend update!<div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre">T</span>his weekend's update of Greed 2 adds a few new things, and fixes a couple of ones that needed fixing.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Removed the fading "read/unread"</b> panels from the tops of the Feed list, Folder list, and Article list. They were getting in peoples' way, and weren't as cool looking as I'd hoped. Those items are now safely out of the way, on the options menu.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Mark all as read:</b> You can now mark all the articles in a feed or label as read. Pick the "Mark all as read" option menu item in the Article list.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span></div><div><b>Filtering for all/unread</b> items in article list now works correctly.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span></div><div><b>Changes to request headers</b> sent to Google Reader to get GZipped content. Download times should be quicker. It's very quick on my Nexus One. Then again, everything I've tried so far is. (I guess I could test this on my G1, but that would take away from the time I get to hold the sweet Nexus One in my hand.)</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span></div><div><b>New "default share address" preference</b>. Specify an e-mail address here, and when you share an article, the "to" field will be populated with this value by default. I could have (perhaps should have) tied this into the contacts on the phone, and probably will at some point. For now, it's a free-form text field. So if you don't feel comfortable typing a valid e-mail address into this space, well... Get a relative to do it or something.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span></div><div><b>Preferences</b> for "follow links" and "scale articles." These options affect the appearance <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>of articles in the viewer. By default, "follow links" is turned off, which means you won't accidentally follow a link when you're touching the article. You can long-press any item in the article viewer (e.g. picture, link) to toggle these settings on and off for the current session.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Next up</b>, I've got an experiment I want to try with Google Reader requests, which should make Greed somewhat faster for some operations. Also, a few UI improvements and fulfilling some feature requests.</div><div><br /></div><div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre; ">H</span>ave fun, and let me know what you think.</div></div><div><br /></div>Kellyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09042925463854783474noreply@blogger.com11